Getting to know you

Learning Objective:

• this activity has a learning objective for the teacher: get to know your students
• learners may learn something about themselves by reflecting on the times they've learnt most effectively

Investing:

• This is useful because
  • you can't differentiate learning until you know your students
  • you can only tailor the contexts of your mathematics to interest learners if you know what interests them
  • you may raise investment levels simply by taking an interest in your learners as individuals
• A 'free gift' with this activity is that you can also make a randomisation die to help you choose who to answer your verbal questions.

Preparing:

• practise making the origami model before you use this with a class- a few of the steps are tricky
• before you start you need to know if there are any barriers or banana skins when asking personal questions:
  • beware that asking about role models may initiate discussion about bereavement;
  • asking about exception lessons may elicit awkward comments about previous teachers - set some boundaries about this
• You will have a deeper understanding if you also follow these surveys up with one-to-one conversations

Resource:

• print out this survey on A4, one copy per learner

getting to know you.doc

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• invite learners to complete it thoughtfully - it slots into the classroom rules lesson quite nicely
• allow 8 minutes, "no more than nor less than 8 minutes"
• if learners think they've finished before this time ask them to elaborate, expand, add to or illustrate their responses

Duplicating:

• photocopy side-by-side pairs of learners responses photo-reducing them from A3 down to A4 (use 71%) to produce smaller copies
• run these A4 sheets through your copier to copy onto coloured paper or card (up to 150gsm)
• cut both sets of smaller copies into A5 sheets

• If that's made sense you should end up with three copies of the completed survey for each pupil:
  • A4 original on white - fold nearly in half (so you can still read the title) and put into their exercise book, perhaps on inside rear cover - use it to periodically remind pupils of what they've promised to change in their learning habits and draw their attention to how this relates to success in their career goals
  • A5 reduced on white to go into your mark book - you could use a small notebook and put pupils' photographs and progress graphs and grades next to their survey to make a class 'yearbook': invaluable at parent-teacher meetings so you can talk about the whole learner, not just scores on tests and homework
  • A5 coloured paper/card to do some origami with as we explain next...

Transforming:

• Now we're going to turn your class's coloured A5 sheets into a big icosahedral die to choose between learners in class.
  
  
• You're aiming for something like this:

Developing:

• Change the survey - consider using the principles of Solution Focused Brief Therapy to frame your questions:
  • Scaling questions: 'on a scale of 0 to 10 where 10 is perfect and 0 is the opposite, where would you rate yourself? What change in behaviour or habit would move you up one?
  • Exception questions: 'think of a time when _ was better than usual. Why was that? How could you make that happen again/more often?'
  • Miracle questions: 'imagine was amazingly good. A miracle happens while you're asleep and ___. What might we first notice in what you do or what you believe to get a hint that this miracle has happened?'
• This will often result in changing what a learner thinks, by forcing them to think about positive change.
• Some ideas in our post-mock-exam survey: